Canadian Armed Forces embrace fun after discovering ‘no actual requirement to be boring’ on social media

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The CAF spokesperson told National Post that this refreshing approach is deliberate, and has led to increased engagement on social media.

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“Over the years, we have found that humour, trends, and pop culture references helped increase our audience’s comfort communicating with us, increased our reach, resulted in more followers, and generally improved the tone of our engagement,” they said.

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“The team also found this was possible without a) negatively impacting our reputation or authority, or b) us needing to actually agree that summer 2024 was a ‘brat summer.’ (Don’t get us started on 6-7.)”

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And the change in tone may be doing more than just entertaining followers. After years of missed recruitment targets, interest in joining the Canadian Armed Forces appears to be rising.

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In January 2026, a spokesperson revealed applications for the regular force were up nearly 13 per cent in the 2025-26 fiscal year, compared to the previous year.

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And in October 2025, a spokesperson said: “From April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, the CAF enrolled 6,706 new members into the Regular Force, surpassing the annual goal of 6,496 recruits. This represents the highest number of enrolments in the past decade and a 55% increase over the previous year.”

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The surge in interest has been widely attributed to a combination of threats to Canada’s sovereignty from U.S. President Donald Trump (though not by the military itself), as well as modernized recruitment systems.

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Still, a few funny social media posts likely haven’t hurt the cause.

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